Look who picked up on the term "CheneyBurton" ... can the "1600 Crew"
be far behind?

Warms my heart, my little word has grown up and left home. [sniff]. And after I repaint its room it'll come home drunk one night with some piece of last-call trash and a marriage certificate. Then there'll be divorce, backstabbing and we'll all end up on Maury with a paternity test. My poor little word, it's all growed up and looking for a double-wide with low payments and new job. [sniff sniff]

Well, I have not seen as many "Memorial Day" sale fliers as in past years. Maybe as the dying continues in Iraq the sobering thought that Memorial Day is to remember those who served and died, and continue to give their lives for our country today is something to be honored, not a reason to offer 10% off on all merchandise.

I never talk about my blog, and that's not really my intent now, but I would like to say Thanks to all of you who stop by here everyday. Our little community is comprised of both Vets, some from WW Second, Korea, The Little Southeast Asian Story Hour, and of course us Cold-Warriors and non-Vets. You all are my inspiration for keepng the doors open and for that I salute you.

It's a good feeling to know that there are others with my background who see that our friends who both died in Hot Conflicts and Cold Wars aka "Peacetime" did not pay the ultimate price for naught. Our government still functions, the pride and dedication that they had is carried forward today by the men and women of our Armed Forces, who unfortunately are being led by a dyslexic, dry-drunk cowardly Momma's boy.

Every day I remember that we are united in our desire to see what has become the worst administration, and biggest embarrasment to our nation in history leave office in January.

I wish all of you a comforting and reflective Memorial Day. It's a day to remember our Comrades-in-Arms, and thank them for giving us our country.

To it's credit the Army has set up programs for soldiers returning from deployments to Iraq to help them to "decompress" for lack of a better term. It's an unintended consequence that the drunken Fratboy Coward and the NeoCon draft-dodgers never forsaw. A big "Bravo Zulu" to the Army for doing the right thing. A middle finger salute to the NeoCons for there ever having to be such a program.

At Fort Riley, this is the last stop before home for soldiers returning from Iraq. Mandatory "debriefs" like this one, to be conducted for thousands of soldiers in training rooms and auditoriums at bases across the country, are a novelty for the United States military. The sessions were begun in response to a spate of deaths at Fort Bragg, N.C., in 2002, when four soldiers were charged with killing their wives in unrelated cases. The sessions reflect the realization that for soldiers and their families, the burdens and sacrifices of deployment go far beyond fighting overseas and waiting at home.

As these re-entry sessions show, coping with war is a long-term struggle, a way of life, falling hardest on a sliver of American society: the men, women and children of the military class, hundreds of thousands of them, many clustered in and around bases like Fort Riley.

But it's not all sweetness and light for some soldiers who will get back to the world:

Christa Dannenberg, 20, had never lived alone until her husband, Staff Sgt. Robert Dannenberg, went to Iraq in March 2003, six months after they married. She had moved from her parents' home into his. Everything got so quiet when he left.

By the time he returned last July, Ms. Dannenberg had learned to handle the checkbook, to wake up in bed alone, to make friends. At first, she said, it was odd to have him back. "I had to initiate every conversation," Ms. Dannenberg said. "It was like he wasn't there. He wouldn't talk."

But they pushed through that, they said. They laugh about it now. "It was hard to deal with," she said.

Sergeant Dannenberg, 23, said he had not even noticed his own silence; it was all a blur. "I guess I just thought she had a lot to tell me," he said. "You get that way in the desert."

He said he hoped he and his wife would get to spend a full year together now, something they have yet to do as a couple.

Not long ago, Sergeant Dannenberg and 700 other soldiers were ordered to return to Iraq.

Daniel Okrent of the Times seems to get it "mostly right" to use his words. In what will undoubtedly become a weasel-word-phrase for print journalists of the future:

The failure was not individual, but institutional.

There is some mitigation in the fact that in this age of "always-on" news and information the urge to "get it first" might allow an occaisional mistake or two, but after being burned by Jayson Blair why would the editorial board of the Times not seek to correct past mistakes and do the right thing, ie practicing Responsible Journalism? They ought to start housecleaning by handing Miller her walking papers.

Okrents piece is worth a read, but expect no major changes from the Times; they are not going to stop being GOP Washington mouthpieces any time soon. At least until the after the election.

At least Okrent acknowledeges Miller is a problem. That's something.

John Warner of Virginia is one of those Republicans with a capital "R". He's like McCain, as conservative as the day is long, but not a kool-aid drinking fanatic. Sort of a throwback to the days before incivility. Well, now he's got the Chickenhawk Goopers all freaked out because he wants an investigation, not a whitewash of the Abu G-Rape scandals. And surprise, the biggie chickenhawks say it will be a "distraction"? Huh? Maintaining Good Order and Discipline is now a distraction?

Warner says his committee has a "solemn responsibility" to discover what went wrong and to "make sure it never, never happens again." But some conservatives are angry about the high-profile televised hearings, saying the prisoner-abuse issue is overblown and threatens to undermine the United States' primary mission in Iraq.
...
"I think he should stop the hearings at this point; we've heard enough," said Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), a committee member. "We have a war to win, and we need to keep our talents concentrated on winning the war as opposed to prisoner treatment."

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) complained that Warner and other Senate members have become "mesmerized by cameras." Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was irked when Warner, in a departure from normal committee practice, decided to put all abuse-inquiry witnesses -- including the secretary -- under oath, according to Senate sources.
...
Friends say Warner -- a sailor in World War II, a Marine during the Korean War and secretary of the Navy before he came to the Senate in 1979 -- is motivated by a strong belief that the reputations of both the military and the Senate are at stake unless they get to the bottom of the scandal.
...
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), another committee member, has expressed concern that the hearing may be "a real distraction from trying to win the war, especially at this most fragile time." House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) also suggested a lower profile for the prisoner-abuse issue, saying, "We should not allow it to distract us from the war at hand."

Even rabid kool-aid consumer Lindsay Graham is in favor of the investigation ... ooops, silly me, he's an AF vet (a JAG). Guess he doesn't want the military to be totally disgraced like the ChickenHawks do. Duncan Hunter was an Army Airborne guy '69-'71...it sort of surprises me that he would fall in line with the ChickenHawks on this one...but, whatever.

Oh, and I love this shot at you-know-who:

Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the president's Democratic challenger, has mentioned Warner as a possible defense secretary, and there has been speculation that he may be in Bush's Cabinet list for a second term. But Warner dismissed such talk, saying running the Pentagon is a job for a younger person.

I guess that the Neocon Moron Brigade over at the Pentagram must have been figuring that the Senators and all their staffers were also Pre-K rejects. Seems that somehow they "forgot" to turn over about TWO THOUSAND pages of the Abu G-Rape investigation materials.

The Pentagon said Wednesday that it inadvertently failed to give the Senate Armed Services Committee a full copy of the 6,000-page Army investigation into the prison abuse scandal.

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said no critical information was withheld and that Defense Department would submit the missing documents to the panel.
...
"The perception that was left was unfortunate, which is that we were somehow trying to withhold something from the committee. That was certainly not the case," he said.

For annextra speshul treet if you foller the link, there mebbe a picture of Miz Hump-a-Lump with a Speshul Mesage for yew...she needs more Valium (or Xanax). I guess that they are keeping her off the sedation until after November...so she can tell us about her four years as a teacher and librarian, when she wasn't running over boyfriends. She say "edumaction is my pashion...that's why I married a Moe-ron".

Hey, really we just invaded Iraq to...put some freedom on your families. No really. And if that doesn't work, then we'll lock your frickin' family of malcontents up. And Shit. No, Reeeealy.

U.S. troops wanted Jeanan Moayad's father. When they couldn't find him, they took her husband in his place.

Dhafir Ibrahim has been in U.S. custody for nearly four months. Moayad insists that he is being held as a bargaining chip, and military officials have told her that he will be released when her father surrenders. Her father is a scientist and former Baath party member who fled to Jordan soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime
...
U.S. officials deny that there is a systematic practice of detaining relatives to pressure Iraqi fugitives into surrendering. "The coalition does not take hostages," said a senior military official who asked not to be named. "Relatives who might have information about wanted persons are sometimes detained for questioning, and then they are released. There is no policy of holding people as bargaining chips."

But Iraqi human rights groups say they have documented dozens of cases similar to Moayad's, in which family members who are not accused of any crimes have been detained for weeks or even months and told that they would be released only when a wanted relative surrenders to U.S. forces.
...
The senior U.S. military official declined to discuss the detention of al-Douri's relatives, saying it is a "special case with very unusual circumstances." In the past, U.S. officials had likened the detentions to those of a material witness who is held for questioning.
...
The tactic, Moayad said, reminded her of Hussein's regime. "The Americans promised us that they would bring democracy and freedom. They talked about the prisoners in Saddam's time, and we expected them to do something better," she said. "But now they're doing the same thing, or even worse."

It's no wonder that the 1600 Crew went looking for lawyers like that putz at UC Berkeley to try and find loopholes in the Geneva Convention for them. Well, when regime change happens this year maybe handing a few of these Neocon asshats over to the International Criminal Courts might improve our image in the world, not to mention serving the cause of Justice ... you know that thing that the Patriot Act was put there to prevent...

Wolfie, Perle, Feith, Rummy and Preznit Shitcher-Drawz in the Criminal Dock at the Hague together after Viceroy Jerry rolls over on them. Well, a Fish can dream, right?

Reports have been rattling around for a few days now that there will some type of terrorist attack here in the US this summer. However, law enforcement officials have been loathe to raise the "threat levels" again, I guess it's the boy crying wolf thing. According to several stories, an unnamed Al-Qaida leader wants to kill four million Americans to even the score for some weird perceived injustices agains Islam.

The United States is al-Qaida's prime target in a war it sees as a death struggle between civilizations, the report said. An al-Qaida leader has said 4 million Americans will have to be killed "as a prerequisite to any Islamic victory," the survey said.

"Al-Qaida's complaints have been transformed into religious absolutes and cannot be satisfied through political compromise," the study said.

The London-based institute is considered the most important security think tank outside the United States. Its findings on al-Qaida's expanding structure and growing support by allied terrorist networks around the world track with similar assessments from governments and other experts.
...
Al-Qaida is the common ideological and logistical hub for disparate local affiliates, and bin Laden's charisma, presumed survival and elusiveness enhance the organization's iconic drawing power," it said.

In 2001 President Bush said he wanted Osama bin Laden "Dead or Alive." In 2002 at a press conference Bush said, "I don't know where he is, I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not important."

The Grey Lady's Mea Maxima (sorta) Culpa. They admit that they were not as ... professional in a Journalistic sense as they might have (should have) been. Really? I'm shocked. Check it out:

But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.
...
...It is still possible that chemical or biological weapons will be unearthed in Iraq, but in this case it looks as if we, along with the administration, were taken in. And until now we have not reported that to our readers.
...
The informant also claimed that Iraq had sent unconventional weapons to Syria and had been cooperating with Al Qaeda — two claims that were then, and remain, highly controversial. But the tone of the article suggested that this Iraqi "scientist" — who in a later article described himself as an official of military intelligence — had provided the justification the Americans had been seeking for the invasion.
...
We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.

When that starts happening, I might believe that they are serious about their contrition...until then, it looks like another smokescreen to buy time for their PR flackery for Fearless Leader to continue. Time to put up or shut up boys and girls. Until then it's: "All the Craven Apologies Fit to Utter"

Sullivan keeps whining that anti-war critics "continue with their relentless negativism", that we're all Nattering Nabobs of Negativism. I guess that when he got his bitch-slapping from Juan Cole, he forgot to read this small piece of work from General Anthony Zinni, USMC (ret), a guy who has seen the elephant and is not afraid to take on the 1600 Crew.

Well, I want to be clear. I don’t have a plan. I have some ideas or thoughts in each of the areas: political, economic, security. This is… I gave you sort of the Whitman’s Sampler of a few ideas. I don’t think…the worst thing we could do is create another U.S. plan. There are a lot of good ideas out there.

Thanks to reader Bruce Webb for the pointer to GEN Zinni's speech

How's this grab you for a lede in a newspaper story?

Despite the growing chaos in Iraq and the recent barrage of bad publicity about the war there, President Bush indicated Monday that he was willing to pay almost any price to implement his vision of the country's future.

In what has to be the most suck-up, sycophantic rendering of verbage since Joseph Goebbels gave speeches for the Nazis in Nuremberg, Sullivan pens a paen to Fearless Leader that will stand as one of his finest pieces of Hackery ever.

Shorter Version: Bush is responsible for Nothing. Bad Shit Happens To Good People.

It's worth a read to try and decipher whether this was a reproduction of a Rovian Blast-Fax or the Original Version. All the bad things that happened in Iraq are not the fault of anyone in the 1600 Crew. The war was entirely justified because well, Saddam Bad, America Good. Fighting the Ba'athists was like premature ejaculation; the end came too fast, and now we're getting burned by the 'afterglow'. The lack of Post-war planning was not the fault of the 1600 Crew. And the Media want the whole charade to fail, because they want the 1600 Crew occupation of DC and America to end (evidence to the contrary notwithstanding). Saddam, well, he might have done business with Al-Qaeda, because Sully thinks that it might have happened, completely disregarding the fact that Saddam brooked no rivals in or out of Iraq for his own imperial intentions in mid-east politics.

If his readers pay money to read this apologist, ignorant shit, then I'd love for some of them to send their money to me, Roger Ailes, Atrios, Waremouse, Logan Circle Guy, Jesse at Pandagon and of course the incomparable SullyWatch (sorry Bob/DH); we'd be more than happy to take free money from morons and declare it at tax-time. We can make shit up too, and it would seem far more credible.

In a discussion transcript from a Washington Post on-line discussion about Commander Codpiece's script-reading tonight:

Peter Slevin: To my ear, there was nothing new in the speech, except perhaps the announcement that the United States would build a new maximum security prison at Abu Ghraib. The speech was short on details and certainly offered no change in course.

The speech seemed to me an attempt to regain the moral high ground and project a sense of confidence about a mission that has gone badly awry.

President Bush repeatedly contrasted the behavior and ambitions of the United States and its foes, saying it was a contest of "liberty and life" against "tyranny and murder."

Is it just me, or is this a 1600 Crew fantasy?

The White House asked the media on Monday to "show respect" for President Bush's twin daughters as they emerge from private life as students to work for their father's re-election campaign
...
They will do an interview and photo spread for Vogue magazine and then work at Bush's campaign headquarters in the Washington suburbs.

Die hard warrior and part-time strategist Scott McClellan today spoke up in a spirited defense of the 1600 Crew. Drawing on his extensive military background and hundreds of days deployed with the 101st Keyboard Commandos, McClellan had this to say about retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni:

"I recognize he's a retired general who certainly stated his position," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. "But the president looks to those active commanders who are working to implement our policies and build a safer world to make America more secure."

Before his retirement, Zinni drew up invasion plans that called for deploying 300,000 troops, more than double the roughly 140,000 now in Iraq.

In the latest wave of stupididity...the 1600 Crew goes on an all-out offensive against ... digital media.

Mobile phones fitted with digital cameras have been banned in US army installations in Iraq on orders from Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Britain's The Business newspaper reported yeterday.

Quoting a Pentagon source, the paper said the US Defence Department believes that some of the damning photos of US soldiers abusing Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad were taken with camera phones.

"Digital cameras, camcorders and cellphones with cameras have been prohibited in military compounds in Iraq," it said, adding that a "total ban throughout the US military" is in the works.

So there you Digital Media Terrorists!!!

Well, once they could call themselves journalists...now media whores seems to be a much better descriptor for most of them. Survey sez...

National journalists were more likely than a decade ago to say there are too many factual errors in coverage, while local reporters were less inclined to say that was a problem.

A majority of journalists of all backgrounds and different type of operations said they do not think plagiarism is more widespread now, despite widely publicized cases in the past year.

The survey found a reduction in the number of journalists who think news reporters are too cynical and many now think they are too timid.

More than half of national journalists say the press has not been critical enough of President Bush. Local journalists were about evenly split between thinking the press is not critical enough or is fair in its treatment of the president.

But he would have failed at that too...Fearless Leader is such a loser, when he goes back the UN they'll listen politely and then laugh their asses off in private.

President Bush prepared Sunday for a campaign to rally support at the United Nations about his policies in Iraq, while senior envoys struggled in Baghdad with competing demands by Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds for the top positions of the new caretaker government.

I'm guessing that the real reason there's a June 30th date is so that Eye-Rack-e unpleasantness does not interfere with the bold brush-cutting of the annual August Crawfordfest. I mean, after all, once a coward always a coward right? It's easier to run away and cut some brush another day, or am I wrong?

The 1600 Crew does predictably well at raising money from the Wall Street Fat Cats...so well that one of their number at Merrill Lynch is a Pio-nanger or whatever.

At Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., a suggestion from chief executive E. Stanley O'Neal is not to be taken lightly.

O'Neal eliminated 24,000 jobs, froze pay and steadily pushed out competitors for executive power, including colleagues who had championed his rise up the corporate ladder. "Ruthless," O'Neal has reportedly told colleagues, "isn't always bad."

So it came as no surprise that when O'Neal sent letters to senior executives at Merrill Lynch in early June asking them to contribute to President Bush's reelection campaign, the response was prompt and generous.

Between June 12 and June 30 of last year, the Bush-Cheney campaign was inundated with 157 checks from Merrill Lynch executives and at least 20 from their spouses; 140 checks were for the maximum allowed by law: $2,000.

Total take generated by the O'Neal letter: $279,750 in less than three weeks.

Who really needed the EPA to be honest anyway? Damn Bureaucrats.

Asked why so many of the top 10 employers of contributors are Wall Street securities firms, Scott Stanzel, spokesman for the Bush-Cheney '04 Campaign, said, "We are proud that we have over 1 million donors to the Bush-Cheney campaign representing every county in every state in this nation."

Altogether, personnel at these seven top 10 firms have given Bush $2.33 million, or a fifth of the $12.14 million from employees of the finance and insurance sector that has flowed to Bush this election cycle.

For a dose of rootin-tootin shootin, Definate Dem, rasslin-lovin commentary go check out the blog of frequent commenter The Mullet. He's more than just a haircut...and worth a read, I think.

Fearless Leader comes to town a-riding on pony...stuck a feather in his ass and called it Denny Hastert. Just kidding. Just because Doughboy Denny has never passed up the buffet table, is no reason to get down on him when we get to point out another 1600 Crew lie...

Iraqis are ready to "take the training wheels off" and assume political power from the U.S.-led coalition, President Bush said Thursday as his administration began to roll out a rough plan for the June 30 transition of authority.
...
Bush's job-approval ratings have slumped to the lowest levels of his presidency, dragged down by bloodshed in Iraq. He sought to reassure lawmakers that despite the polls, he is eager for his re-election fight.

In remarks released by the White House on Thursday, Bush called the handover "a complete passage of sovereignty." He did not mention in the interview with Al Zaman newspaper, conducted Tuesday, that troops from the United States and other countries will be in Iraq indefinitely.
...
But White House spokesman Scott McClellan said simply that Brahimi's candidates would be the people who take the reins of government. "I expect they will be the caretaker government," he said.

Oh, and let me take this opportunity to pile on Denny "Doughboy" Hastert, a true ignoramus, and a man not fit to lick John McCain's shoes. Eat me, you pusillanimous little punk. There, now I feel better. Digby has the ultimate smackdown.

Go read it.

Gosh could you ever imagine behavior like this from the 1600 Crew?

A series of Justice Department memorandums written in late 2001 and the first few months of 2002 were crucial in building a legal framework for United States officials to avoid complying with international laws and treaties on handling prisoners, lawyers and former officials say.

The confidential memorandums, several of which were written or co-written by John C. Yoo, a University of California law professor who was serving in the department, provided arguments to keep United States officials from being charged with war crimes for the way prisoners were detained and interrogated. They were endorsed by top lawyers in the White House, the Pentagon and the vice president's office but drew dissents from the State Department.
...
Prof. Detlev Vagts, an authority on international law and treaties at Harvard Law School, said the arguments in the memorandums as described to him "sound like an effort to find loopholes that could be used to avoid responsibility."

Gee, couldn't happen to a nicer guy. The truest Neo Con, convicted embezzler and all around good felon, Ahmed Chalabi. Seems that he's fallen out of favor with his American masters...

A year ago, as U.S. troops swept toward Baghdad, Ahmed Chalabi and about 400 hastily assembled fighters were secretly airlifted into southern Iraq to rally other Iraqis and begin a march toward Baghdad to help topple Saddam Hussein, an operation that won the concurrence of U.S. officials all the way up to Vice President Cheney's office. Chalabi had predicted that he would become Iraq's Spartacus, cutting a wide swath through Iraq and mobilizing vast numbers behind him, according to U.S. officials.
...
"The vast majority of reports of his proximity to and influence on administration policy have been greatly exaggerated," said a senior administration official involved in Iraq policy who knows Chalabi.

One of his aides declared himself "mayor" of Baghdad. His supporters established what U.S. officials called "Chalabi cantons," complete with roadblocks and tolls. And loyalists sent out word that Iraqis should report to the Iraqi National Congress (INC) before returning to work.

His agents were also faster than U.S. troops at getting to Iraq's intelligence headquarters, where they took thousands of sensitive files, which the INC has refused to return to the new intelligence ministry, U.S. officials say. Supporters were implicated in commandeering the property of former Baath Party officials, from homes to upscale cars.
...
"Now it's demonstrable that he told the U.S. government a lot of things that were not true," said Pat Lang, former head of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency. At the United Nations last year, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented the U.S. case for war, which included information on mobile labs for the production of chemical or biological weapons based on data from a defector provided by the INCdata that the United States has since conceded were untrue.

But Chalabi, a Shiite Muslim educated at MIT and the University of Chicago, has been unrepentant. "We are heroes in error," he told the Daily Telegraph of London in February. "As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important."

Maybe they'll just quietly hand him over to the Jordanians...trussed up like a Thanksgiving Turkee. How appropriate would that be?

get the feeling that the whole Mess in Mesopotamia would have been a non-starter if the Media had actually done their jobs? Thought so.

There are servicemen and women out there in Iraq as you read this. They have been put there for the most questionable of reasons: the Hubris of an incurious, inarticulate and essentially daddy-fixated, mommy-fearing man. They are doing the best that they can, with in some cases inadequate supplies, armor and other 'niceties' in 90+ degree dusty days only bound to get worse as summer approaches. So how are they being supported in their daily struggle to coexist with a population that's increasingly unsettled and now has more fuel like this to kindle the flames of their resistance?

Previously secret sworn statements by detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq describe in raw detail abuse that goes well beyond what has been made public, adding allegations of prisoners being ridden like animals, sexually fondled by female soldiers and forced to retrieve their food from toilets.

The fresh allegations of prison abuse are contained in statements taken from 13 detainees shortly after a soldier reported the incidents to military investigators in mid-January. The detainees said they were savagely beaten and repeatedly humiliated sexually by American soldiers working on the night shift at Tier 1A in Abu Ghraib during the holy month of Ramadan, according to copies of the statements obtained by The Washington Post.
...
Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, detainee No. 151108, told investigators that when he first arrived at Abu Ghraib last year, he was forced to strip, put on a hood and wear rose-colored panties with flowers on them. "Most of the days I was wearing nothing else," he said in his statement.

Hilas also said he witnessed an Army translator having sex with a boy at the prison. He said the boy was between 15 and 18 years old. Someone hung sheets to block the view, but Hilas said he heard the boy's screams and climbed a door to get a better look. Hilas said he watched the assault and told investigators that it was documented by a female soldier taking pictures.

"The kid was hurting very bad," Hilas said.
...
"Do you pray to Allah?" one asked. "I said yes. They said, '[Expletive] you. And [expletive] him.' One of them said, 'You are not getting out of here health[y], you are getting out of here handicapped. And he said to me, 'Are you married?' I said, 'Yes.' They said, 'If your wife saw you like this, she will be disappointed.' One of them said, 'But if I saw her now she would not be disappointed now because I would rape her.' "

He said the soldiers told him that if he cooperated with interrogators they would release him in time for Ramadan. He said he did, but still was not released. He said one soldier continued to abuse him by striking his broken leg and ordered him to curse Islam. "Because they started to hit my broken leg, I curse my religion," he said. "They ordered me to thank Jesus I'm alive."

The detainee said the soldiers handcuffed him to a bed.

"Do you believe in anything?" he said the soldier asked. "I said to him, 'I believe in Allah.' So he said, "But I believe in torture and I will torture you.' "

The uniformed culprits that need to be examined include the commanders of the MI detachments/units and "men" like Jesus Jerry Boykin, who have been shown to have had some role in this. Rumsfeld not only needs to go, he needs to go to trial for violating the Geneva Convention and it would not be such a stretch to drag Fearless Leader there with him. Think about it; if there were ever a conflict (the Unitarian-Texan cloud being forbid) with say, China or North Korea, they could rightly point to our abrogation of the Geneva Convention with respect to the treatment of any prisoners. How would you feel knowing that even with the Geneva Conventions in place it provided the barest security for American prisoners during WWII with the Japanese, the Korean War with the North Koreans and in Vietnam with the North Vietnamese; now we have said it's not consequential and lived out those words. Again, the 1600 Crew has screwed future generations, for their own hidden agenda, and it's going to hurt a lot of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines someday, but I hope that day never comes.

Sez the Duchess about Juan Cole:

But his biases are so acute I don't trust him an inch.

And by the way, I can't wait to see what lies Commander Codpiece comes up with next week at the Army War College. Whatever it may be, you can be sure that Lap-Dog Sullivan will be watching and rebroadcasting it as "bold" and "farsighted", but as we all know words and deeds are somewhat divergent within the 1600 Crew; just ask anyone not a recipient of their Largese after Fearless Leader has said something nice about them. Nothing will be done, Sullivan will spend about two weeks crowing with triumphalism about his hero's 'vision-thing', Commander Codpiece will see that there's no quick fix, toss away his new toy and Sullivan will again be "so disappointed". My timeline may be off by a few weeks; but by June 30th Sullivan will make up a new award and give it to his hero ... just a guess.

Quoth a Chickenhawk from Texas:

Then Senator John Cornyn of Texas weighed in, suggesting that Mr. Warner, a Navy officer in World War II, a Marine lieutenant in the Korean War and a Navy secretary under Nixon, and Mr. McCain, who lived in a dirt suite at the Hanoi Hilton for five years, were not patriotic. Their "collective hand-wringing," Mr. Cornyn sniffed, could be "a distraction from fighting and winning the war."

Rummy had a dozen Republican senators over to the Pentagon for breakfast on Tuesday, and Mr. Cornyn said the secretary was exasperated by the "all-consuming nature" of the Congressional hearings.

The man who David Plotz of Slate says is widely "considered one of the dumbest members of Congress" chimed in, dumbly. Following up on his inane rant defending the soldiers accused of abuse at Abu Ghraib and whingeing about "humanitarian do-gooders," Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma wondered whether Mr. Warner was trying to help the Democrats with public hearings.

The two would-be hipsters -- Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney -- were aides to the new president, Gerald Ford. At that time Rumsfeld and Cheney were persuading Ford to veto one of the most important Watergate-inspired reforms, an enhanced Freedom of Information Act, designed to guarantee public and media scrutiny of the FBI and other agencies. FOIA, the two aides warned, would take too much power from the executive branch.

This is where I came in...I'm headed back to a dark room before my migraine returns full force. Jeebus.

Love of Money and Power. Seems that if you could get an "exception" you could import beef into the US from Canada, even as the Secretary of Greediculture was saying "No Way, Dudes". Wonder why?

Ms. Veneman, a former food industry lawyer and lobbyist, has former representatives of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and other industry groups among her top staff members.

In the next six months, a total of 33 million pounds of Canadian processed beef flowed to American consumers under a series of undisclosed permits the USDA issued to the meatpackers, permits that remained in effect until a federal judge intervened in April.
...
In her August announcement allowing importation of boneless beef to resume, Veneman said the risk that ground beef might contain the mad cow infection was too great to allow it in. She and her top deputies said ground beef imports would resume only after the agency completed a formal rulemaking process, with public debate.
...
Bullard said few in the meat industry seemed to know that Canadian processed beef and other products that were not on the officially sanctioned list had been coming into the United States since September. The USDA said it could not disclose which American importers had received the permits.
...
In his ruling against the USDA, U.S. District Judge Richard F. Cebull wrote that the agency appeared to be ignoring its own rules and pronouncements.

"The Court is concerned by the manner in which, according to counsel for USDA, USDA has been authorizing imports of virtually all edible bovine meat products, apparently through issuing individual permits, at a time when it was assuring the public that such authorization would take place through the rulemaking process," he wrote on April 26, when he issued a temporary restraining order against the agency.

So how come this happens in an administration where money doesn't buy influence?

To Creekstone Farms manager Bill Fielding, his company's idea does not seem unreasonable. In order to satisfy its very important customers in Japan -- customers the company needs to survive -- Creekstone wants to test for mad cow disease every one of the cattle it slaughters.
...
But there is a big obstacle in the way of Creekstone's mad cow initiative: The U.S. Department of Agriculture will not allow it.
...
USDA officials say that they sympathize with Creekstone and similar operations hurt by the bans imposed by Japan and other nations, but that agreeing to the company's request could imply there is a safety issue with American beef and usher in an era of expensive testing that has no scientific justification.

Really, I wonder if Creekstone ponyed up for the RNC and the 1600 Crew like say Timken or Cintas if they would have problems like this...after all a mere $500,000 invested in food safety would be far better in Political Safety...it keeps the 1600 Crew from having to send it's bagmen around to fuck with you.

There is this whole debate emerging, led by Instahack and others about the nature of the Mess in Mesopotamia. Fine. They were wrong, we were right and that about ends the conversation...but more troubling is this column that Atrios points to by Tony Blankley, somewhat of a force in his own right, having been schooled at the feet of Uber-Neocon Newtie, and much more low-key but very connected in his own right. Sez Tony:

But all this potential capacity for victory can only be brought into full being by a sustained act of collective will. It is heartbreaking, though no longer perplexing, that the president's political and media opposition want the president's defeat more than America's victory. But that is the price we must pay for living in a free country. (Sedition laws almost surely would be found unconstitutional, currently — although things may change after the next terrorist attack in America.)emphasis is mine

Our diversity of opinion makes us who we are...it's served us well for most of our history as a Republic; and now some republicans see it as a crippling liability...we've come so far to have gone nowhere at all...and we even have a "King" George.

I managed to avoid the hospital and all it's 'bad craziness'. Which is a 'good thing'. Damn, HST and Martha in one line...whooda thunk it?

I truly appreciate all your thoughts, good wishes and great advice...

I could not stay in bed much longer, so Mrs. Fish let me get on-line for a few minutes if I promised not to yell, and stayed away from the freepers...

So with all that, I found a couple of things to talk about, and then its back to the 'recovery zone' before they make me take more steroids and triptans....

Been suffering from a killer-bad migraine; the kind that puts me in the hospital, which is what I'm trying to avoid...back later today or tomorrow. Too much good stuff to miss, but I can't even look at the monitor right now.

Thanks, go check out some of the great links in the Pond (ISEbrands.com is a new catch).

Back Later...sorry for the bloggus interruptus.

Preznit Big Bidness has managed to single-handedly begin to crush world-wide equity markets. Hell, he's already driven ours down to its year low, and it's only May.

Stock prices plunged at the opening bell on Monday after a car bomb attack killed the head of the Iraqi Governing Council, raising questions about the planned June 30 transfer of power from coalition forces back to local officials.

...All the major U.S. benchmarks closed at their low points for the year.

Sullivan does not live in a closet, but in our collective living rooms. His recent blog entry bemoans the fact that his book garnered him numerous interviews from the broadcast media including questioning from his old YMCA workout-buddy Anderson Cooper, (what's up with that reference?) but nothing from FOX. I wonder if he's seen this from the Blade:

On a recent trip to New York, I visited a gay bar on the Upper East Side, where I met a familiar-looking man wearing an expensive suit and excessive makeup. After a drink or two, I realized that he was one of the star anchors at Fox News Network, that tool of the conservative right masquerading as a “fair and balanced” news operation.

He wouldn’t admit his identity, only that he “worked for News Corporation,” the parent company of Fox, so I played dumb and let him buy another round of martinis.

At 3 a.m. and after more than a few drinks, the closeted Fox star could barely balance on his bar stool.

His solicitations for a date became more intense and desperate. So I told him I was not single and, “not interested dating anyone in closet,” and left him wobbling on his stool.

The stakes are too great this year for any of us — Democrat, Republican, black, white, famous or infamous — to hide in the closet and grant Bush another four years to pander to his fundamentalist Christian, anti-gay base.

Payback for a Bush victory in 2004 will come from our collective hides: more anti-gay legislation and rhetoric, more bigoted judicial nominees, and undoubtedly one or two (or more) Supreme Court picks.

Anyone living in the closet will deserve a small piece of the blame if Bush is re-elected.

An Army Staff Sergeant is being tried for desertion in a courts-martial in Georgia. He came home from Iraq on a two-week leave, and decided not to go back, but instead seek C.O. status. I have gone on record as saying UA is a bad idea, and the SSGT did not go about making his case the right way and is now paying for it by being courts-martialed. But it makes you wonder, again, how the 1600 Crew has the moral authority to drag any serviceman or woman in front of a court given Fearless Leader's service record.

Maybe SSGT Mejia should have been born into a rich family and gotten his teeth cleaned in that four-month interregnum, then at least he'd be eligible to run for high office and have the adulation of the deluded.

You can get everything, seemingly, on Ebay. Check this out, and read the seller's item description, he's got to be a Democrat.

...Would make a GREAT gift for a retired pilot, future pilot, non-pilot, Rumsfeld or the Govenor of California!

Preznit Jesus Rocks! has managed to cave in to the christo-fascists about everything...and now some of the most conservitard republicans (Duke Cunningham, Nancy Reagan) are questioning the wisdom of blocking stem cell research.

There is a possible cure waiting in the wings for people with juvenile diabetes, Alzheimer’s, ALS, Parkinson’s, heart disease, cancer, as well as spinal-cord injuries. It’s called stem-cell research. At the moment things are stalled at research, just short of moving forward to applying the technology and changing millions of lives. Why? The White House has said it will not release federal funds for embryonic stem-cell research.

On the night of May 8, my mother, Nancy Reagan, was given an award for caregiving at a Beverly Hills fund-raiser for stem-cell research. “We have lost so much time,” she said when accepting her award. “I just can’t bear to lose any more.”

There is something this administration might not have counted on: the determination of the human spirit. When it comes to life and health, and freedom from disease, people will not be deterred. If there is no federal funding, the money will come from other places. Memo to the White House: people will not allow their children to live with juvenile diabetes when there is a potential cure that could free them and restore their bodies to health. My family has watched my father, once called "The Great Communicator," vanish into the shadows of Alzheimer’s; we are only one of many families who know the cruelty of this disease. My mother has taken her sorrow, her loss, and stood up for the one cure that can prevent people in the future from knowing this agony. George W. Bush, though he may want to try, can never stand in the way of people who want to banish the diseases that are stealing so much.

we're in soooo much trouble in Iraq and the Middle East. Read the whole thing...here's an excerpt.

For nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core, some say gung-ho, Marine. For three years he trained fellow Marines in one of the most grueling indoctrination rituals in military life - Marine boot camp.

The Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience and transformed him forever. He was honorably discharged with full severance last Dec. 31 and is now back in his hometown, Waynsville, N.C.
...
"It was just a personal conviction with me. I've had an impeccable career. I chose to get out. And you know who I blame? I blame the president of the U.S. It's not the grunt. I blame the president because he said they had weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie."

How interesting that the Times gives Op-Ed space to Sullivan, to whine about conservatives who won't accept "Gay Marriage" (or "Marriage" as Sullivan calls it). The one person I would not expect to miss the point (sardonic laughter here) about the conservative viewpoint on Gays and Marriage writes as though even Pat Robertson will one day be performing same-sex ceremonies, just because?

He seems to forget that the christo-fascists (even if they have gay friends) would rather die than admit gays are human. The Catholic Church, Sullivans Religious Opiate of 'Choice', an institution famous for coming down on the wrong side of many issues with a sledge hammer, has been whispering sweet little anti-Gay missives in the ears of many politicians and adherants for years. Our gay-basher in Chief is proposing amending our constitution to ensure that these new unions are no more than a footnote in our history.

How can someone purportedly so smart be so dumb? From a Newsweek Article

The new Newsweek poll out this week find increasing acceptance among Americans for same-sex unions as Massachusetts gets set to allow the first legally- recognized same-sex marriages in the nation.

The poll shows that a majority (51%) of adults approve of some form of legal recognition for gay and lesbian couples; 28 percent say they favor full marriage rights, while 23 percent favor civil unions or partnerships but not gay marriage.

Note (this was in my draft and did not survive CTRL-V): and for the record, how about just marriage, no big "M", no Gay, no nothing, just a couple of folks living, loving and being. With the right to celebrate their love and lives, grow old, get divorced, have kids if they choose and have to put up with teenagers...whatever.

When an E-4 can see what highly paid and influential idiots at DoD and elsewhere can not, you have to wonder.

Over the year, some ambitious goals fell by the wayside. Lieutenant Iliff recalled the day he had to cancel elections in December for seats on a neighborhood council in Baghdad. First, the men tried to bar women from voting. Then they mobbed the ballot box. The lieutenant ended up hand-picking three people for the seats.

Whatever government does take root, "I think it'll have to be an Iraqi version of it," he said, adding: "Westernized democracy just won't work. They haven't been taught from a young age to think the way we think in the West. They don't have an understanding of the same rights."

Cpl. Jonathan Torres, 20, of Puerto Rico, echoed that sentiment: "It's going to take a lot longer than they thought it would. Here, people are used to another way of living. They thought they could change it in one or two years. It's going to take a lot longer."

The Neocons who have spent all their time and effort trying to nullify the Geneva Convention and subsequent attempts to "civilize" (if that's possible and even the right word) treatment of prisoners of war and other combat-zone unfortunates need to read this and reflect on what it means in the context of Abu Ghraib, it's what happens when Leadership goes off the "reservation" so to speak...although as thick as they are, I'm guessing they'd miss the lesson.

The infamous "Bullet Decree" was signed not by Hitler or Himmler or even Goering, but by an SS General in Aachen, somewhat removed from the center of government. The accountability for it was of course rightly placed with the Nazi High Command, and they (at least those Nazi Leader who did not commit suicide) were ultimately charged with the War Crimes of executing the 76 prisoners who should have been returned to a POW camp after doing their duty and escaping. According to the "Bullet Decree", escapees were to be sent here.

Accountability for the Abu Ghraib atrocities does not just lie with the few low-ranking guards who are caught on film doing their unspeakable deeds. Like the "Bullet Decree", the orders to act had to originate far, far up the chain of command, the visible actors are, as in March of 1944, not the most responsible. The question becomes when does the only governmental body that can hold those folks responsible and accountable begin to do their jobs...

Remember, a semen-stained blue dress triggered years and millions of dollars of investigation into the honor of the Office of the President; is our word of Honor as signatories to the Geneva Convention not worth the same thing? Ultimately it will be every captured Soldier, Sailor, Airman and Marine who will pay for the Neocon indifference to the Convention...and the next "Bullet Decree". I guess "Rule of Law" only applies when you make the Rules and hire the "right" judges to interpret the "Law".

In the series that the Post is doing on $$$ and the 1600 Crew and influence, they have a really nice graphic up of Preznit 2-Buck Ho's "Spheres of Influence". If you put your mouse over the various subtitles in the circles it gives you a little summary. If you roll your mouse over with the "Bush Oil Ventures" or "Friends and Family" subtitles, guess who never shows up?

PALAST: Does the Bush family also have to worry about political blow-back? The younger Bush made his first million 20 years ago with an oil company partly funded by Salem Bin Laden's chief US representative. Young George also received fees as director of a subsidiary of Carlyle Corporation, a little known private company which has, in just a few years of its founding, become one of Americas biggest defence contractors. His father, Bush Senior, is also a paid advisor. And what became embarrassing was the revelation that the Bin Ladens held a stake in Carlyle, sold just after September 11.

In an interesting series of articles the Washington Post has been linking republican fund-getting (as opposed to fundraising) efforts to influence in political circles. And to think, they are just now figuring out that there may be a linkage. Gosh. Anyhow, this is kind of an interesting story...especially the part where it only cost the dude "zillionaire chump-change" to make millions more and keep environmental groups from getting a say in the process.

Richard T. Farmer is one of America's richest men and a Bush Pioneer by virtue of having raised at least $100,000 for the 2000 campaign. Over the past 15 years, he and his wife have given $3.1 million to Bush campaigns, the Republican Party and Republican candidates.

Farmer's family controls Cintas Corp., a $2.7 billion company that rents and launders uniforms and industrial shop towels. For years, Farmer's industry has been at odds with the Environmental Protection Agency over increased regulation of shop towels, particularly a Clinton administration proposal that, though not fatal, "would have cost us a lot of money," Farmer said.

In a recent interview at company headquarters here, Farmer said his campaign donations were made with no strings attached. He said he supports Republicans because they believe in "less government, more individual freedom, more individual responsibility.

After a series of telephone calls, e-mails, letters and meetings with representatives of the laundry industry, the EPA had provided industrial-laundry lobbyists with an advance copy of a portion of the proposed rule, which the lobbyists edited and the agency adopted.

That same opportunity was not given to the rule's opponents -- environmental groups, a labor union, hazardous-waste landfill operators and paper towel manufacturers who argue their product should be treated as environmentally equal to laundered towels.
...
In May, Whitman sent a conciliatory response: "Partnerships with our stakeholders will be an important part of how we will do business at EPA."

To aid in the effort, the industry urged contributions to its Textile Rental Services Association's Political Action Committee. "Will PAC donations open doors, get appointments and allow your message to be delivered? Absolutely," Textile Rental magazine said in its March 2002 edition.
...
Farmer said he never contacted the administration about the new rule. He said he did complain about the rule to Ohio Republican Sen. George V. Voinovich and Rep. Rob Portman, a fellow Bush Pioneer and chairman of Bush's campaign in Ohio this year.

Farmer said he made the calls in 2002 on behalf of the two laundry trade groups.
...
About the same time in 2002 that Farmer was making his calls and the trade groups were contacting members of Congress, he made a major contribution. On March 19, 2002, Farmer gave $250,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Also, the EPA opted not to require the towels to be wrung out. "The point of that is not to make it harder to do than what you would do through your normal course of business," Dellinger said.

However, he told the group, the paper towel industry would have to wring out its towels to make sure they had no more than five grams of solvent on them before being dumped.

If Mr. Farmer and all the other big donors honestly think that the American people believe that money can't buy influence, then either they are under the impression that we are really stupid or ....[fill in the blank]

jeebus.

I have finally figured it out...damn, I should have seen it all along. Andrew is to intellectual reasoning and writing what the Enquirer is to journalism. Poor Andrew. He wants sensationalism and because those pesky media-types are no longer going with the sensational, they're sticking to the factual. Apparently since the Nick Berg story has been receding a bit (I'm sure his family is grateful for small favors), the Duchess is now incensed that the pesky damn prison scandal is being well...revisited by the media.

Sullivan wants at least another week of full-on Berg coverage to get the media off his Codpiece and onto that other war porn...the kind that seems to just excite the warfloggers and blowhards to no end.

I guess that the actual, verifiable misdeeds of military miscreants of all ranks and positions is far less important to Andrew than his new tabloid interests. Well, in keeping with his new drive to be an up'n'coming Tabloid Blogger, look for him to fly to Mexico City to cover the strange lights in the sky, be abducted and conceive an Alien Baby, who will look like...Perlowitz...

"I was raped by androgynous Aliens who looked like Saddam and Osama and now I'm having their baby" by AS...yup, he's getting closer and closer...don't bogart that joint my friend...

The new definition of "Cannon Fodder".

The folks lining up at KBR's Houston training center are not worried about these billions or millions. They are happy to get off with a few thousand bucks. In the Iraq gold rush, you sign for a one-year contract - renewable pending your qualifications and endurance. Basic salaries are equivalent for comparable jobs in the US - but become three times as fat because of the bonuses related to the dangers implied. A health plan and a $50,000 life insurance is included. The first $80,000 is tax-free - as long as you remain in Iraq for at least 330 days. And if you get killed, the significant other gets half a salary for life.

Who wants these jobs? The great majority are divorced, have held plenty of jobs before, are used to living near the desert, must pay outstanding debts and, in most cases, want to get a shot at saving and maybe opening their own businesses. There are not many PhD holders in the bunch. Truck drivers, cooks and housing managers are in high demand.

The gold rush involves passing a first-step screening - which can be on the phone or live with one of dozens of KBR traveling salesmen all across the US. If you have a criminal record, however minor, you're out, says a black man trying to work as a security guard who once got a drunk-driving conviction.

You have to wonder if there isn't something to this question...

One wonders, had more Iraqis been given similar job opportunities, whether the United States could have avoided a catastrophic war on both the Sunni and Shi'ite fronts.

And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's
where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after
committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly
looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father
rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And
they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the
bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest
father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly
'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me
and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay
$50 and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?"
And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench
there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I
said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand,
and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing,
father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the
bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of
things, until the Sargeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it
up and said.
...

("KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?")

I went over to the sargent, said, "Sargeant, you got a lot a damn gall to
ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm
sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench
'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women,
kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug." He looked at me and
said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send you fingerprints
off to Washington."

And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a
study in black and white of my fingerprints.

Apologies to Arlo...but it's a pretty fair use of his stuff I think in light of what's happening...thanks, man. It's still great, timeless...a classic. Sorry we had to have another war to bring it up again.

It's hard to believe, but I long ago promised I'd not be amazed at anything the 1600 Crew did or said. Sorry, I was wrong. How can anyone actually believe that a man who managed to disgrace his own military service could say this:

President Bush said Thursday he felt "disgraced" by the images of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners but reminded West Virginia voters that the actions of a handful of Americans should not sully the nation's military.
...
"I want to say one other thing about our troops," Bush said. "Like you, I have been disgraced ... by what I've seen on TV, what took place in the prison. But the actions of a few do not reflect on the fantastic character of the over 200,000 men and women who have served our nation" in Iraq.

If those enlisted folks are a "disgrace" then what's Rumsfeld and what about the rest of the Pentagon-based cilivilian keyboard commandos?

Ah, I am always forgetting, it's the era of personal responsibility...someone elses...nothing but luv for ya! mean it! kiss kiss!!!

Asshat.

Why he ought to resign: Because he makes statements like this:

In Iraq on Thursday, Rumsfeld called the controversy surrounding the prison a "body blow for all of us" and said the people who did wrong will be punished.

"You can be absolutely certain that the abuses of a few are not going to change how we manage this force," Rumsfeld told troops. "We need all of you to make this thing work for our country."

"Howdy, Preznit Oedipus, rush chairman, damn glad to meet you..."

There is someone out there willing to kill off the medical liability caps legislation. The House passed a bill that will allow rollover of Medical FSA money from year-to-year. Good. But they seem to have tied it to other legislation capping medical liability...more campaign contributor payback.

People who set aside salary in tax-free accounts for health bills would be able to roll unused funds over to the next year or into long-term health savings accounts under legislation approved by the House Wednesday.

Approved 273-153, the bill is one of three pieces of related legislation that Republicans are pushing during a week of heightened attention to health care and the uninsured. All three have previously passed the Republican-led House, but have been blocked in the Senate, leading House Democrats to assert that the new round of votes is merely political theater.

The other bills would place limits on medical malpractice awards and let small employers buy into national health insurance plans to get more affordable rates for employees.

From the Dupont Denier:

When people are indoctrinated, it is hard to get through.

When you have all three branches of the gubmint in your control, and you still don't have enough there's some other problem. Really. Check it out.

Christa Criddle is not the sort of person who springs to mind when political operatives talk about "opinion leaders."
...
"What will our country be like if John Kerry wins?" she implored her guests to imagine. "That scares me to death. . . . Liberalism today is modern socialism."
...
Or an influential may be a more conventional sort such as Criddle, a cheerful and articulate woman who dropped her Junior League commitment to devote all her volunteer hours to Bush. She says she keeps Fox News "going pretty much 24-7" because she believes it is best for political news free of liberal bias. She runs her errands sporting her "Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Democrat" T-shirt.
...
Linda Zins-Adams, who teaches German, regards the presumed Democratic nominee as a rudderless phony who is running only because "he's bored and wants something to do -- he has to have a reason for his $1,000 haircuts." Various speakers denounced the alleged Democratic view that terrorists should be prosecuted rather than have war waged against them. They also carped about the United Nations, welfare, Hillary Rodham Clinton and abortion-rights supporters. One man, visibly emotional, said liberals have rejected God and declared, "Hitler was a liberal."

These folks are determined to win and continue to trash our great country. We have to make sure that they don't. Donate. Volunteer. And especially: VOTE.

Besides paying back Big Pharma, which is always a top priority of the republicans (value for the lobbying and junket dollar) the real Medicare Plan: Make it so complex that Seniors will pass away before they can figure it out.

"What it's like is a bunch of confusion," said Katharine Roberts, 77, who said she had not been to a movie in six years, in part because of her drug expenses. "You might find you really need three cards, and you can only choose one."

The cards are a 19-month stopgap measure to provide discounts of 10 percent to 25 percent for Medicare participants who have no other prescription drug coverage. In addition, low-income participants are eligible for subsidies of $600 a year.
...
"I'm 85, do I have to go through this nonsense?" asked Florence Daniels, a retired engineer who said she received less than $1,000 a month from Social Security, of which she paid $179 a month for supplemental medical insurance. She gets drugs through a New York State program, which provides any prescription for $20 or less. To make ends meet and afford her drugs, she said she bought used clothing and put off buying new glasses. Some of her friends travel by bus to Canada to buy drugs; others do without, she said.

Ms. Daniels did not use the government Web site to compare drug cards, in part because she cannot afford a computer. "I'm trying to absorb all the information, but it's ridiculous," she said. "Not just ridiculous, it's scary. If there was a single card and it was administered by Medicare, and it got the cost of drugs down - wonderful, marvelous. But with these cards, the only thing we know is that we'll have to pay money to other people to administer what we can get and can't get."

The discount program, which is financed largely by the cards' sponsors, reflects the Bush administration's desire to open Medicare to market principles without allowing participants to import drugs from other countries, which many Democrats favored.

It's nice to know that the same CongressCritters who don't ever have to worry about the cost of their prescriptions now or ever passed this piece of crap legislation. And I understand that AARP (a beneficiary of the bill) is due for some love too...gee y'all thanks for nothing.

as Stupid writes:

Puh-lease. Trying to implicate the president himself in the Abu Ghraib horrors, trying to claim that his "disbelief and disgust" were somehow faked, seems to me to be excessive. To equate him with O.J. Simpson is a symptom of creeping Krugmanism

Remember that rocket-scientist general, the evangelical christian who assured us all that Islam was a far inferior brand of religion to what's practiced here? William Boykin? Well in any other place and time and universe, he would have probably been handed his walking papers and been doing the Evangelical lecture circuit to augment his retirement checks. But not with Preznit Jesus Rocks! in charge; it's a wonder he's not Chairman of the JCS by now. Anyhow, the good General may have been involved in the little controversy in Iraq...

The U.S. Army general under investigation for anti-Islamic remarks has been linked by U.S. officials to the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, which experts warned could touch off new outrage overseas.

A Senate hearing into the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was told on Tuesday that Lt. Gen. William Boykin, an evangelical Christian under review for saying his God was superior to that of the Muslims, briefed a top Pentagon (news - web sites) civilian official last summer on recommendations on ways military interrogators could gain more intelligence from Iraqi prisoners.

Critics have suggested those recommendations amounted to a senior-level go-ahead for the sexual and physical abuse of prisoners, possibly to "soften up" detainees before interrogation -- a charge the Pentagon denies.

Well, what with all that 'personal responsibilty' and accountability breaking out about as fast as the Peace, why, I just expect his resignation within....years. Or after the November elections.

To the family of Nick Berg. Just a guy, looking for a break in the wrong place at the wrong time. There can't be any words for his family that will ever provide the comfort for losing a son, brother and friend. RIP Nick Berg.

But to the 1600 Crew: J'accuse.

Wow. With millions of unemployed Americans, you'd think the House of Representatives would actually work .... or something.

The week of April 26 was eventful and troubling for the nation, yet curiously brief and serene for the House of Representatives. Thirty-five U.S. servicemen were killed in Iraq. CBS aired shocking photos of Americans abusing prisoners near Baghdad. The federal debt reached an all-time high, more than $7.13 trillion.

In the House, meanwhile, members returned to Washington on Tuesday of that week for three quick, unanimous votes at nightfall. They renamed a post office in Rhode Island, honored the founder of the Lions Clubs, and supported "the goals and ideals of Financial Literacy Month."

The next day, Wednesday, was a bit busier. After naming a Miami courthouse for a dead judge, House members debated how to extend the popular repeal of the tax code's "marriage penalty." The only real issue was whether to pass the Democratic or Republican version. The GOP plan prevailed, 323 to 95.

After two days and one night of desultory activity -- roughly their average workweek this year -- House members packed up and rushed home to their districts.

Two things for the Mud Bug, one: if a blog is an on-going conversation, why don't you have comments? I mean duh, in your case it's a broadcast, not a full-duplex conversation at all. And two, are your readers paying for column inches or commentary? I guess double posting gives you half the responsibility and all the pleasure. Or you're blogging stoned again. Nice work if you can get it.

I'd love to leave that thought in comments...oh, well.

Talk about having a set of cojones...how does the Washington Post even have the brass to write about the 1600 Crew lying and then being shocked! shocked!, when they are among the lead enablers of that pack of thieves and liars.

ON JUNE 27 President Bush pledged in a speech that the United States would not use torture on detainees in the war on terrorism. The same day, the Defense Department's general counsel released a letter specifying that "all interrogations, wherever they may occur," would not violate prohibitions in the U.S. Constitution against cruel and unusual punishment. It turns out those assurances were false. Two months earlier, The Post reported Sunday, the Pentagon had approved interrogation techniques for detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison that allowed the disruption of sleep patterns and exposure to heat, cold and "sensory assault." Officials told reporter Dana Priest that similar procedures had been approved for "high value" detainees in Iraq. Such abuse is impermissible under the Constitution; as recently as 2002 the Supreme Court ruled that similar treatment of an Alabama prisoner was an "obvious" violation of the Eighth Amendment. Such practices also violate the Geneva Conventions, which the Bush administration says it is following in Iraq and applying to other detainees elsewhere.
...
Mr. Bush traveled across the Potomac yesterday to congratulate Mr. Rumsfeld for the "superb job" he is doing as defense secretary. The president again characterized the abuses as the aberrations of a "small number" of servicemen and women. These are not the right responses to one of this nation's worst disgraces. Instead, the administration should reform the system so that it meets the guarantees that Mr. Bush falsely offered last June.

Everyone knows that four US civilians, employees of Blackwater Consulting were killed and mutilated in April in Fallujah, and we all know that Commander Codpiece went into paroxysms of rage over those killings (I sure don't remember him getting all worked up about the five Marines killed). Here's a possible reason for his "rage". A campaign contributor and staunch republican supporter: Erik Prince, brother of Betsy DeVos of the Amway DeVoses.

A month ago, Blackwater USA founder Erik D. Prince enjoyed a surprising level of anonymity.

Not many people knew just how big his Moyock, N.C.-based company was. Few knew how prevalent private security firms were in Iraq. Even fewer knew that the sandy-haired , blue-eyed 34-year-old hailed from one of the wealthiest and best-connected families in Michigan.
...
Gary Bauer, a conservative activist and one-time presidential candidate, counted Edgar D. Prince – Erik’s father – among his inner circle. In 1988, Prince helped Bauer start the Family Research Council, a “pro-family” lobbying group.

“I cannot adequately describe here how much I have depended on his wisdom and counsel over the years,” Bauer once wrote in a letter to council members.
...
While Elsa Prince is still active in town, the most well-known family member is Erik’s sister, Betsy. She married Dick DeVos, whose father, Richard, is co-founder of Amway, owner of the Orlando Magic basketball team and No. 216 on Forbes’ most recent list of the world’s richest people , with a net worth estimated at $2.4 billion.

Betsy DeVos is a mover and shaker in her own right. She chaired the Michigan Republican Party for several years and personally collected millions of dollars from the Princes and DeVoses for her top cause: school vouchers. She declined to comment about her brother for this story.
...
In the days following the deaths of his employees, Prince briefed key members of Congress, including Sen. John Warner, R-Va .

Prince also hired Alexander Strategy Group, an influential Beltway firm known for its strong Republican ties, to represent Blackwater as it faces questions from Congress.

Prince’s family connections might not get him contracts, but they could help if Blackwater starts feeling the heat, said William Hartung, the president’s fellow at the New School’s World Policy Institute in New York City.

The "War Dividend" will always make someone a buck. The "Peace Dividend", well it takes leadership, planning and willpower. So which one makes people happy, not the one you'd expect, at least not everyone.

Along a quiet strip of gray corrugated metal buildings, across the street from a La-Z-Boy distribution center, Gary Allen and his ever-expanding crew are running one of the most urgent operations of the Iraq war.

Around the clock, seven days a week, O'Gara Hess & Eisenhardt churns out heavily armored Humvees, designed for the guerrilla combat and roadside bombs bedeviling U.S. troops. Last August, a back-lot warehouse held excess inventory. Now, after a $1.5 million investment, 30 new workers on two shifts produce 500 sets of three-inch-thick bulletproof glass a week. As many as 10,000 sets are on back order.
...
There are economic downsides. In inflation-adjusted terms, the war's cost will surpass the United States' $199 billion share of World War I sometime next year. Coming on top of three major tax cuts, that spending will drive the federal budget deficit to more than $400 billion this year. That borrowing will eventually have to be repaid in higher taxes or reduced government services and benefits.

Economists have long argued that war is an inefficient use of government revenue. A dollar spent on a highway not only employs workers but also creates a lasting, broadly shared benefit for the economy. A dollar spent on military equipment is soon lost to enemy attack or the rapid wear of war. If it bought a bomb or bullet, it simply explodes.
...
"We're only a pawn. You know that. Everybody in this community hopes like hell that Goodyear keeps this plant here. If the military drops out, we could be done. It's a bad deal," he said.

There was once a poster during Vietnam: "War is not good for Children and other Living Things", I wonder if that included the Economic Health of the nation?

Frequent commenter Lurch dropped an interesting observation in my mailbox, and I thought I'd share it with you:

Those with strong political adhesions may consider it with an inner gasp of recognition or with a scoffing “It can’t happen here.” Simultaneously, HBO was showing Tim Nelson’s “The Grey Zone” which takes place at Auschwitz. Readers are probably more familiar with this theme, even if they haven’t seen the film itself. This film is about the moral dilemma of actively assisting one’s executioners.

The serendipity of course lies in the programming decisions made weeks ago to broadcast these two films detailing some of the most egregious examples of authoritarian abuse of prisoners.

I don’t necessarily hold with either school of thought about the likelihood of the new, streamlined 21st Century America once again validating the theme of “life imitating art.” But I do like “1984” for the amazing insight into totalitarianism and redirected thought, provided by a former apparatchik who changed his views, perhaps because of a mid-life political crisis.

Orwell’s metamorphosis from totalitarian Socialism and Communism into Democrat is too long and involved to detail here, but he manages to quite well set out some of his thoughts in the book that is generally considered his seminal work.

Smith’s thoughtcrime, doubting the wisdom of the Party, is carefully introduced in small, easy to digest bites as he rewrites history – yesterday’s newspapers, recasting them with today’s spin. Where yesterday the enemy was East Asia, today it becomes Eurasia, and the old paper report is tossed into an oubliette, the “memoryhole,” and consumed in flames.

The chocolate ration has been increased to 20 grams. Yet, Winston clearly remembers that last week’s chocolate ration was 30 grams, and Oceania had not always been at war with Eurasia, because he could remember East Asia was the enemy only last week.

His apparently accidental meeting with O’Brien, an Inner Party member, leads him eventually to search for the Brotherhood, and anecdotal resistance group. Discovered, captured, he is taken to the Ministry of Love, and taught to love Big Brother. Yes, there was torture, but don’t worry – it was more like college fraternity hazing than real torture.

“…Anything could be true. The so-called laws of Nature were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. 'If I wished,' O'Brien had said, 'I could float off this floor like a soap bubble…”

“…[T]he Party says the earth is flat', 'the party says that ice is heavier than water' -- and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them. It was not easy. It needed great powers of reasoning and improvisation. The arithmetical problems raised, for instance, by such a statement as 'two and two make five' were beyond his intellectual grasp. It needed also a sort of athleticism of mind, an ability at one moment to make the most delicate use of logic and at the next to be unconscious of the crudest logical errors. Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult
to attain...”

“…There was a heavy tramp of boots in the passage. The steel door swung open with a clang. O'Brien walked into the cell. Behind him were the waxen-faced officer and the black-uniformed guards.

'Get up,' said O'Brien. 'Come here.'

Winston stood opposite him. O'Brien took Winston's shoulders between his strong hands and looked at him closely.

'You have had thoughts of deceiving me,' he said. 'That was stupid. Stand up straighter. Look me in the face.'

He paused, and went on in a gentler tone:

'You are improving. Intellectually there is very little wrong with you. It is only emotionally that you have failed to make progress. Tell me, Winston -- and remember, no lies: you know that I am always able to detect a lie -- tell me, what are your true feelings towards Big Brother?'

'I hate him.'

'You hate him. Good. Then the time has come for you to take the last step. You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him: you must love him.'

He released Winston with a little push towards the guards.

'Room 101,' he said…”

But this is silly. It’s fiction, the self-serving apologia of a man who decided in middle age that he had been cruelly deceived about politics during his indiscreet youth. It can’t happen here.

Can it?

Unfortunately, it would only encourage the total tribute that bears a Monday timestamp. If there were anymore crawfishing done before by Sullivan it had to have been practice-runs, or psuedonymous rough drafts between moments of sobriety, logical excess rewritten under the kind tutelage of Beagle...and I have to quote from the slimy soap drain, so sorry for that, but you are free to read the linkages too...On WMDs:

Yes, the infrastructure was there, the intent was there, the potential was there - all good cause for concern.

Americans who trusted their president and defense secretary to get this right. To have humiliated the United States by presenting false and misleading intelligence and then to have allowed something like Abu Ghraib to happen - after a year of other, compounded errors - is unforgivable. By refusing to hold anyone accountable, the president has also shown he is not really in control. We are at war; and our war leaders have given the enemy their biggest propaganda coup imaginable, while refusing to acknowledge their own palpable errors and misjudgments. They have, alas, scant credibility left and must be called to account. Shock has now led - and should lead - to anger. And those of us who support the war should, in many ways, be angrier than those who opposed it.

The hostage who went to Iraq to make enough money on the 1600 Crew Campaign contributor enrichement plan returned home to Mississippi. Hamill who went to Iraq to drive trucks was captured and held.

Thomas Hamill, who worked for Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, was kidnapped April 9 in the Abu Ghraib region west of Baghdad in an ambush of a supply convoy by insurgents. Eight other people – two U.S. soldiers and six other Kellogg Brown & Root contractors – also were kidnapped.

As the Chickenhawks and warfloggers continue to label those of us un-Patriotic who have been wary, fed-up, horrified and yes, disenchanted by the Mess in Mesopotamia for a long time before the first bomb fell and right up to the present day, it might be instructive for them to read this:

In addition to trimming the U.S. troop presence, a young Army general said, the United States also should curtail its ambitions in Iraq. "That strategic objective, of a free, democratic, de-Baathified Iraq, is grandiose and unattainable," he said. "It's just a matter of time before we revise downward . . . and abandon these ridiculous objectives."

Instead, he predicted that if the Bush administration wins reelection, it simply will settle for a stable Iraq, probably run by former Iraqi generals. This is more or less, he said, what the Marines Corps did in Fallujah -- which he described as a glimpse of future U.S. policy.

The other best quote from this article is from El Gordo Chickenhawk Wolfowitz talking about how he's never heard bad things. They never seem to reach his ears.

Asked about such antagonism, Wolfowitz said, "I wish they'd have the -- whatever it takes -- to come tell me to my face."

He said that by contrast, he had been "struck at how many fairly senior officers have come to me" to tell him that he and Rumsfeld have made the right decisions concerning the Army.

All the allegations and shouting from everyone set aside for one moment here, lets's start all the judicial proceedings with the senior officers most directly in leadership roles at Abu Ghraib, not the very top guys, because right up front getting to issues of their culpability is going to take the cooperation of the mid-level officers involved. As with a many prosecutions it's going to take someone in the middle ponying up a memorandum for the record they wrote, or notes from a meeting they have that's going to lead to someone higher. And goddamn it that's where responsibility and accountability are going to have to fall for this it make an impact going forward, and that's fifty-one percent of the battle.

Sure we can punish all the Lynndie Englands involved. What they did should have clearly offended their conscience, if it can be demonstrated that they were thinking about their actions at all. The military has a mechanism to settle up with them, and it's both non-judicial (not extra-judicial) and administrative, costs less money and can be done in less than a week. If the Army takes all the junior enlisted players to Article 15 hearings (and they agree to Article 15 instead of Courts-Martials) they will be "tried" in that venue by their local commander and can be recommended for administrative seperation when that's all over. An "ADSEP" board can award them one of three types of discharges, Honorable, General under Honorable Conditions, or an Other-than-Honorable. An Honorable is the only one that guarantees a dischargee with full benefits and is the desired outcome for anyone in the service. The other two are much more limited in what the person gets from limited benefits to nothing at all...the service pretends you were never there, and the dchargee gets to go to their grave pretending the military "did them wrong" (except the ones who escaped Leavenworth by bargaining).

I don't advocate this because I want those who directly performed these actions to "walk". But it's time to stop beating up on the enlisted troops because they had shitty leaders. The comments I have read (when they speak with out lawyers) from the officers involved sound like a bunch of crybaby whiners, not leaders. They are clearly hoping for nothing more than a reprimand and a chance to put in their papers for retirement. Not so fast.

The tone of leadership that was set by the 1600 Crew's belief that they did not have to abide by the Geneva Convention, that they could allow non-accountable contractors from CACI and other companies to "run the show", that the CIA could have free rein over prisoners and work with such a small degree of oversight all made this happen. All of those groups need to be brought to the dock, and made to answer.

Clearly this was a true failure of Leadership. It's to the Army's credit that the Taguba report exists at all, and it's also to the credit of some unknown person that it was allowed to see the light of day; it restored my faith in how the military works when given the chance to do the right thing.

Many of you may disagree with me about prosecuting the enlisted personnel, but in the long run look what happened at My Lai; by avoiding the middle of the chain of command, the leaders most responsible were never scrutinized; the investigations never went to the parts of the chain that might have made a difference. Who knows, doing it right then might have avoided Abu Ghraib altogether.

Update: I just wanted to add this little gem I found on Yahoo News.

An Army report into the abuses at the prison, written by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, faulted Karpinski and other commanders in the brigade and its subordinate battalions, saying leaders paid too little attention to the prison's day-to-day operations. Previous abuses of prisoners or lapses at the prison went unpunished or unheeded, the report found.

Karpinski's subordinates at Abu Ghraib at times disregarded her commands, and didn't enforce codes on wearing uniforms and saluting superiors, which added to the lax standards that prevailed at the prison, said one member of the 800th MP Brigade.

The soldier, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also said commanders in the field routinely ignored Karpinski's orders, saying they didn't have to listen to her because she was a woman.

Well, didn't Fearless Leader once put a bounty on Osama bin Forgotten? Now it seems that Osama has put a bounty on Viceroy Bremer's head. Iraq just keeps getting better and better. Saddam has to be sitting in his prison cell, awaiting trial, dying of cancer and laughing his ass off at Preznit Totally Incompetant. I don't think he could have planned for the ineptitude of the 1600 Crew and their attempts to remake the world for corporate-facist capitalism.

An audio recording attributed to Osama bin Laden offered rewards in gold Thursday for the killing of top U.S. and U.N. officials in Iraq or of the citizens of any nation fighting there.
...
''You know that America promised big rewards for those who kill mujahedeen (holy warriors),'' the speaker said. ''We in al-Qaida organization will guarantee, God willing, 10,000 grams of gold to whoever kills the occupier Bremer, or the American chief commander or his deputy in Iraq.''

Thanks again for the martial distractions from rebuilding our country...I'm guessing Chimpeachement is out of the question this year?

It's a good thing that Fearless Leader does not read polls, because this would surely give him the West Texas Vapors and have him in bed for a week:

More voters now say the removal of Saddam Hussein was not worth the cost financially or in casualties caused by the war in Iraq, according to a poll released Wednesday night.

The NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll found that 42 percent of registered voters say it was worth the cost to get rid of Saddam and 47 percent felt it was not worth it. An NBC-WSJ poll as recently as March found 50 percent of adults felt it was worth the cost to remove the Iraqi leader.
...
The poll of 1,012 adults was taken Saturday through Monday and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, slightly larger for registered voters.

The next time that a Congressional republican spouts off about anything they think that John Kerry did or did not do, they should get this blast-faxed to their office. I wonder if Atrios could arrange this one? Here's the quote:

"Iraq is free of rape rooms and torture chambers."—President Bush, remarks to 2003 Republican National Committee Presidential Gala, Oct. 8, 2003

President Bush: "I do not need to explain why I say things. — That's the interesting thing about being the President. — Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

So how do you start one of them there Google-thingys anyhow? Fearless Leader = The Rape Room Commandante.

Seems appropriate.

Reading Sullivan did you ever get the impression that he's just as disengaged on gay issues as he says Jonah Goldberg is? For all the printers ink he's spent over the years, I can't see him all that far from the position he says Lucianne's Spawn has taken. He postulates that "animus" is a sign of taking someone seriously, but he seems to bear no animus to those who would destroy him and his community. Instead he marks himself as he marks Goldberg:

Not being able to be bothered while a minority is persecuted ... is the moment when inactivism becomes indistinguishable from moral abdication.

Good evening, Incestuous Blogging here reporting live from our nations wasteline...really, seems that a few of us are having thoughts about the relationship between Janet Jackson's boobies and that pornography out of Iraq.

The superbowl of Manufactured Outrage from the wingnut contingent looks a bit silly now doesn't it? Colin's Fat Little Tribute to Nepotism notwithstanding on the position of naked female breasts, it seems that the best the Christo-Fascists can do is "well, Saddam's gone" and of course the ever-popular Pigboy and fraternity hazing (pssst...those Iraqis, they wanted it doncha know? Bill Clinton Hillary Clinton, John Kerry looks French).

So really, what's the deal? How come the condemnation of the 1600 Crew by the keyboard commando battalions has not been as loud and demonstrative as their bleating about sex, drugs, rock'n'roll and Howard Stern?

I guess that the wingnuts have not traveled back to the future yet to read the words of Justice Potter Stewart:

In 1964, Justice Potter Stewart tried to explain "hard-core" pornography, or what is obscene, by saying, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced . . . [b]ut I know it when I see it

Wish in one hand...shit in the other, see which hand fills up first. Unless you're the 1600 Crew and you have a congress with the convictons of a two-dollar hooker. The 1600 Crew wants another TWENTY-FIVE BILLION dollars for continuing the hostilies in Iraq and supporting operations in Afghanistan. Fine on the latter, if they are serious about pursuing Al-Qaeda and the Taliban; we invaded Afghanistan for a real reason, and should see that to completion. But this?

The White House yesterday asked Congress for an additional $25 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the fiscal year that begins in October, reversing course on its plan to wait until after the election to seek more money.

White House budget director Joshua B. Bolten and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz made an unscheduled trip to Capitol Hill yesterday afternoon to lay out the request in a meeting with House and Senate Republican leaders. The administration's request was driven by unanticipated combat, higher-than-expected troop levels and rising political pressure, White House and congressional aides said.

TWENTY-FIVE BILLION. Sorry for shouting, I just had to say it again.

The public schism between the Civilian Neocon Chickehawks at the Pentagram and the State Department has been talked about for so long that the original conversation has been, until now, forgotten. State has maintained that the civilian idiots over at DoD had no business making policy and running/rebuilding a country. Who knew that they could have ever been so right?

But the Pentagon repeatedly failed to act on both requests, said U.S. officials, who are privately furious over a human rights disaster that they believe might have been averted if military officials had acted on their requests.

Defense officials sharply disputed suggestions that Rumsfeld or other senior Pentagon authorities turned a deaf ear to the appeals and ignored festering problems at U.S.-run detention centers. They said there were no major differences between the departments of State and Defense over the handling of detainees in Iraq, saying top administration officials had generally agreed on the need to reduce the number of prisoners in U.S. military custody and ensure proper management of detention facilities.

The 1600 Crew bears responsibility for the whole prison mess. As we see in this country, their instinct is to incareration first, questions later, if ever. This was a command failure, and that "command" is based at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, whether or not responsibility is ever accepted there.

So, how do you like your war now, George?

Well we all know that he cain't tawk...but does he have to get on TV and prove he's an ignoramus yet again? From his interview with the Arab TV stations today:

“This is a free country. We do not tolerate this kind of abuses.”

Afterward, White House press secretary Scott McClellan later used the word “sorry” a half-dozen times in a briefing for reporters. “The president is sorry for what occurred and the pain it has caused,” he said.

Asked why Bush himself had not apologized, McClellan said: “I’m saying it now for him.”

No Dis Bush?

The Walt Disney Company is blocking its Miramax division from distributing a new documentary by Michael Moore that harshly criticizes President Bush, executives at both Disney and Miramax said Tuesday.

The film, "Fahrenheit 911," links Mr. Bush and prominent Saudis — including the family of Osama bin Laden — and criticizes Mr. Bush's actions before and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Damn. All folks interested in the Truth, now please proceed to Universal...the rides are better anyway. And they have Emeril's and Hard Rock.

Amazingly enough, even the staunchest of supporters of "look Ma, no evil", Andrew Sullivan seems to be having a hard time with the Codpiece and his minions suborning torture in Iraq. Little did our lassie know that the continuance of the torture and rape rooms would be the product of good old 1600 Crew rhetoric...remember that stuff?

George W. Bush's "You're either with us or with the terrorists" mentality and his repeated lie that the occupation of Iraq is an extension of the war with al-Qaeda also foster an atmosphere of distrust and violence.

[Juan] Cole says, "The rhetoric that all those who oppose the U.S. presence in Iraq are 'terrorists' also dehumanizes prisoners of war and implies that they are akin to the Sept. 11 hijackers, when, in fact, many of them are just neighborhood boys who took up a gun to defend their city quarter from what they saw as foreign incursion."

The forces of evil are being dealt a terrible blow on the battle-field.

So he says:

It renders one speechless.

Looks like Preznit No Guts and Not Much Else is still trying to make a bogey man out of John Kerry. Caught a little bit of his stump speech in Cincinnati tonight, the local Fox station carried some of it live. Wow. Surprize there. And ol'Yellow Bus was still spouting off how Kerry voted 350 times to raise taxes, wants to impose a 50-cent gas tax hike (hey, even that Faux New Englander Sullivan likes that ide-ar), and would harm the JOB Market (really, and those 3 million jobs gone since 2001 are where....?). The lying just never ends.

Tuesday's bus tour, about 60 miles through western Ohio, actually includes two airplane flights - one from Detroit to Toledo and another from Toledo to Dayton. His first two stops - Maumee and Dayton - are in counties Al Gore won in 2000. The last two stops - Lebanon and Cincinnati - are in counties that Bush won easily.

Exchanging Air Force One for an eight-wheeler emblazoned with the slogan "Yes, America can," is one way to get his face before the voters.

Perhaps the bus should be named "Yes, I put America in the Shitcan, singlehandedly". Hey, if the shoe fits....

How can some clever Democratic advertising guy frame this as Preznit Don't Know, Don't Care's tank-riding moment?

President Bush boarded a bus emblazoned "Yes, America Can," shed his suit jacket and set out across the Midwest on Monday to chat with supporters and offer himself as a sympathetic leader attuned to working-class values.

The two-day bus tour through Michigan and Ohio, which together have lost more than 500,000 jobs during his term, was aimed at shoring up poll numbers suggesting that a majority of voters doubt that Bush understands their problems.

C'mon y'all, it's too good to miss...remember opportunity knocks but once and this time it's not wearing a suit...just a cheap imitation of humanity and humility...how about 500,000 people greet him wearing flight suits and holding unemployment benefit forms?

Apparently now that this little issue of, ummmm, abusing prisoners is coming out into the open, it seems that the Poodle Corps has its issues too...

The Ministry of Defense announced that it was starting an investigation into allegations of abuse by British troops in Basra, Iraq, after the publication on Saturday of photographs that appeared to show a hooded Iraqi prisoner being beaten with rifle butts and being urinated on by British soldiers.
...
The photographs show the hooded man being beaten with rifle butts in the head and groin. One shows a gun barrel placed through the hood into his mouth. One soldier is seen urinating on him. The final few photographs show the man lying limp. He was eventually driven away from the army camp and then dumped off the back of a moving vehicle, the soldiers told The Mirror. They did not know whether he survived.

It's the multi-national enterprises getting rich via our politicians, and they're calling the shots in some cases, with no consequences for bad decisions. (Invade here, slap an electrode on that one, drop some willie-pete on that town and then fire for effect...we'll bill you later, when the furor disappears, no pun intended). The whole War on Terra™, the meaningful reason for military involvment anywhere, if there is such a thing in what's essentially a law enforcement function exist in Afghanistan. But there's no economic incentive there for the big contractors, whose portfolio includes Oil and Gas services to do bidness. Ahhh, but Iraq, a horse of a different color...black and blue seems to be the color of choice at the moment. Neither will make us real popular in the Arab Community...

Hey, if Blair got kicked out along with Fearless Leader would we have "Peace in our Time"? Doubt it, they've now managed to piss off even those who once liked us...

Interesting interview with General Richard Myers (amazing how many Dicks there are in the 1600 Crew these days). Myer is trying to explain the Marines withdrawlal and subsequent hand-over of Fallujah to a former Iraqi General...or at least trying to use up oxygen to say something anything since he has no clear answer to Chris Wallace's questions. Then this pops out:

...and we've got to find the folks who perpetrated the Blackwater atrocities against the Blackwater personnel. Those are the objectives.

If we are now running overt military operations to avenge the deaths of campaign contributor's employees, then maybe it is time to rethink everything and look for an exit strategy, because that's no reason to use military force. Not at all.

Kitty Hackery in todays NYTimes. A subject that's been broached here before (numerous times) is now getting a bit of attention for the WAMEDIA Heathers.

Did you know that the Vice-President had gotten five deferments, the last one which conicided with the baby viewed by most of Crashcarts most ardent Christo-Fascist supporters as at best a space-alien dropped in Lynne's womb to aid Angina-boys efforts to shirk duty in a war he supposedly "supported".

So no, Seelye plays this with the most gentle of reminders that Col Code Blue managed to game the system (disloyal opponents abound!!) and call Kerry's credentials in to question, all in one hour on a college campus.

Kerry at least (and at last) seems to be taking this fight home to the oppostion. Seems to me that honorable service in Combat, a Silver Star and Bronze Sure make you somewhat immune to the ravings of a five-time draft dodger, who would go to any lengths to aviod service.

Angina boy's comments:

He added that he "would have obviously been happy to serve had I been called."

Away from the hearing room, he told the Washington Post that he had sought his deferments because "I had other priorities in the 60's than military service."

"I don't regret the decisions I made," he added. "I complied fully with all the requirements of the statutes, registered with the draft when I turned 18. Had I been drafted, I would have been happy to serve."

But others contend that Mr. Cheney appeared to go to some length to avoid the draft.

Imagine that. A Republican Neocon Chickenhawk...who lies.

As Jesse says: Uh....yeah. I'm guessing that the irony of declaring May 1st as "Loyalty Day" is lost on Preznit Intellectually Incapable. May Day, indeed. 7700: Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.

Check this out. You can be a good Catholic, or you can be a Really Good Catholic or you can be the Governor of Indiana.

Seems that the Governor of Indiana, a good former Catholic schoolboy, is pro-Choice and so he can't come address his Alma Mater.

Indiana Gov. Joe Kernan's high school alma mater withdrew an invitation for him to speak at commencement because his stance on abortion conflicts with Roman Catholic teachings.
...
D'Arcy said Friday that the school's theology teachers believed the Catholic governor's appearance would contradict moral truths they teach and expect students to embrace.

And all the Biblical you know, forgiveness, love and brotherhood stuff, well it's all for the great unwashed masses. Guys like the Bishop really wish that the dark ages would return, the halcyon days of his church, its hate and majesty. They are doing all they can to bring it back, as quickly as possible. Hey, maybe he's bidding on the Grand Inquisitor for the Midwest job even now.

And no, I don't hate Catholics, I just despise dogmatic cretins like this pandering fool seems to be. Pandering to who? To the worst elements in his church, who would probably shoot a doctor who provides reproductive health care options, because he could find some morality in that; which is after all only homicide, not abortion.

So BG Karpinski, in charge of 16 prisons and 3400 soldiers pleads ignorance. I love this statement.

But she said she did not visit Cellblock 1A, in keeping with the wishes of military intelligence officers who, she said, worried that unnecessary visits might interfere with their interrogations of Iraqis.

She acknowledged that she "probably should have been more aggressive" about visiting the interrogation cellblock, especially after military intelligence officers at the prison went "to great lengths to try to exclude the I.C.R.C. from access to that interrogation wing."

She was referring to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has been given access over time to Iraqi detainees at the prison.

OKay, I missed it. Somewhere. Back in the olden days, when my commission was awarded to me by President Jimmy Carter someone told me that they were commissioning me as an officer because they placed "special trust and confidence in the patriotism, valor, fidelity and abilities" in me. The Navy in it's infinite wisdom handed that paper over to me with an understanding: we'll let you be an officer, act like one. So then I read this about the Iraqi prison scandal:

In an e-mail, a commissioned officer in the unit, the 372nd Military Police Company, based in Cumberland, Md., acknowledged that the abuses had occurred but attributed them to a far-reaching failure in leadership.

"I won't defend my soldiers," the officer wrote, on the condition of anonymity. "They knew better."

The officer added: "I am extremely disappointed in the way the Army has handled the entire situation and feel the leadership has been made the scapegoat for a few individuals. I think the leadership problems go much higher than the brigade commander." In an e-mail, a commissioned officer in the unit, the 372nd Military Police Company, based in Cumberland, Md., acknowledged that the abuses had occurred but attributed them to a far-reaching failure in leadership.

"I won't defend my soldiers," the officer wrote, on the condition of anonymity. "They knew better."

The officer added: "I am extremely disappointed in the way the Army has handled the entire situation and feel the leadership has been made the scapegoat for a few individuals. I think the leadership problems go much higher than the brigade commander."

Accountability for this should go to the top, right to that most un-accountable of places, the White House, but it won't. BG Janis Karpinski ought to be offered the option of forced retirement with no pension or if she does not choose that, a Courts-Martial with a possible outcome of a Duck Dinner, reduction to E-1 and a few years as an inmate at hard labor. Others should have similar options open to them.

This is a classic failure of Leadership, not Management. There was no one 'in charge', it seems that everyone from PFC's with a 'tude to CIA guys to "Private Contractors" had some role and no one will be stepping up to assert they were actually "leaders". but rather they were "gatekeepers" "clockwatchers" or some other functionary charged with sheparding nameless, faceless Iraqis in and out of a prison system that became its predecessor, even as Preznit Buster Rectum trumpeted the "Liberation" of Iraq from such abuses.

Yeah. Now, let's see how long before they turn this back on "inadequate training, poor readiness and The Clenis™".

Lies and more lies. Seen the 1600 Crew re-elect commercials, you know the ones where the Insipid Liars try and blame the whole post-Cold War draw-down on John Kerry? Pretty annoying, considering it was Poppy and Crashcart who endorsed and engineered pretty much the whole draw-down scenario...

Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been charging that John Kerry would be a dangerous president because he opposed many key weapons that the military now relies on, himself presided over the biggest cutbacks in defense programs in modern history when he was secretary of defense under the first President Bush.

As Pentagon chief from 1989 to 1993 Cheney canceled or cut back many of the same weapons programs – bombers, fighter planes, battle tanks – that he says Kerry tried to deprive the armed forces of.

Many of the Cheney-era cuts were made at the end of the Cold War, when the administration of President George H.W. Bush was seeking to reduce the size of the military. But some of these downsizing efforts would have affected the military of today.

Cheney proposed, for instance, disbanding part of the Army's Fourth Infantry Division, the unit that captured former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein last December, according to Congressional Quarterly.

The latest Bush-Cheney campaign ad depicts weapons such as the B-2 stealth bomber flying over a battlefield and then disappearing into thin air, attempting to convince voters that if Kerry prevailed back then, U.S. military forces would be underequipped.

Yet Cheney canceled the B-2 bomber program after 20 planes, even though the Air Force insisted it needed 132. He opposed upgrading the M1 Abrams tank, recommended killing the latest model of the F-14 fighter jet and opposed buying more F-15s.

I guess that for this go-around, Crashcart and Sock-puppet can lay as their claim to fame starting a war and gutting the VA. Wow, all those achievements for one lifetime. I guess all VP Angina has to do is to marry a woman who writes hot girl-on-girl bustier rippers and his life will be ... complete.

I really could not make this up, could I?

A shout out to frequent commenter Mr. Murder, who is responsible for (thankfully) sugar-free iced tea on my monitor. Best new name for 1600 Crew Press Secretary: Squat McMellon. Thanx, MM. I needed that.

I wish I had known that there was going to be a protest at the local ABC affiliate, I would have gone down and shot some pictures to put up here. So much for avoiding "work" at work. Here is an interesting statement made by the Sinclair Broadcasting Group's counsel:

Sinclair general counsel Barry Faber confirmed the company told its ABC affiliates not to air Friday's "Nightline."

"We find it to be contrary to public interest," he said.

ABC said that on the first anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, it aired the names and pictures of all those who died on that day.
...
"Mr. Koppel and 'Nightline' are hiding behind this so-called tribute in an effort to highlight only one aspect of the war effort and in doing so to influence public opinion against the military action in Iraq," the statement said.

According to campaign finance records, four of Sinclair's top executives each have given the maximum campaign contribution of $2,000 to the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.

And in the Flying Pigs Department, why doesn't he RNC/1600 Crew reelection committee give the SBG folks their money back? That would be a great statement if they were serious about real "freedom of the press", nah, a tainted buck is a tainted buck...it's all the same to them.

1. Awwwww,
   
2. Memorial Day
   
3. The Other cost
   
4. On Judy's Lying Ass or "how I conned a country" Miller
   
5. John Warner, unlikely hero?
   
6. Hoping no one noticed?
   
7. Enough for everyone to puke about
   
8. Scary...
   
9. Oh, Really?
   
10. Andy does Agnew